YouTube vs TV

Hunter Walk, the director of product management for the company, told the New York Times: "Our average user spends 15 minutes a day on the site. They spend five hours in front of the television. People say, 'YouTube is so big,' but I really see that we have a ways to go."

I submit that you and I are outliers on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Although it's interesting: Charlene's out at this campus in western Massachusetts. We'd heard that internet was going to be the best way to communicate, but that's been down since she got there. If she stands in the right place she can get cell coverage, just enough for some voice and, interestingly, the Facebook app on her iPhone, though not enough for web browsing or email on the same device.

So I've been facilitating communicating between the family of one of her co-volunteers by Charlene Facebooking it, then I copy and paste it into email, and vice-versa. At least somewhere on the Connecticut/Massachusetts border, the state of the art in communication involves copy and paste on status updates.

I realized recently that I watch almost NO live TV. I have dozens of hours
spooled up on my DVR. We get Movies via Netflix DVD delivery and broadband (they
don't seem to have license to send all their movies via broadband which is quite
annoying.

My twin daughters are even worse they do "tivo" some shows but seem most
attached to the web and online games xbox wii & ps3. They have grown up knowing
the plastic box is attached to the rest of the world and we really confused when
we had a net outage (we are part of local wireless community that loss a router
in a storm) and asked me to help them figure out why xbox live wasn't working.
When I explained it would not be fixed for hours or days they started watching
youtube on their iphones rather suffer the plastic box unconnected from the
world.

Eric, could I suggest True Blood, Weeds, House, NUMB3RS, Castle for alternatives
to watch. I tried to watch Dollhouse (big Whedon fan) but it just sucks, not in
a true blood way.

I'm not a heavy TV watcher - I've been off cable since 2001 (watching the twin
towers fall in my last month as a subscriber). I took advantage of the switch to
HD broadcast and bought a sweet 36" Sony WEGA off Craigslist for dirt.
Unfortunately it occupies an enormous amount of space in the living room. But it
shows DVDs in their purest 480i resolution.

I follow a few series on Hulu (V, Dollhouse, Chuck!) but my broadband is only
1.5mbps down. I can manage one stream, but that's it. Fortunately, those series
are sporadic/cancelled.

I'm in the midst of an interesting experiment. I no longer receive any broadcast (or cable or satellite TV).
I've got a PS3 with access to video and TV shows through the PlayStation Network, plus an Apple TV with
(still theoretical, I haven't finished connecting it up) access through iTunes and Hulu.

I don't think we're quite at the point where that's a complete replacement for cable, and I'll be interested
to see my bandwidth stats once I've cleared the holiday DVD backlog. I suspect it may be a "good enough"
replacement for me, though.